Posted
by
Roblimo
on Thursday April 03, 2014 @04:16PM
from the breaking-the-i/o-speed-barrier dept.

Obviously, the first performance enhancement you do on any computer you own is max out the RAM. RAM has gotten cheap, and adding more of it to almost any computer will make it faster without requiring any other modification (or any great skill). The next thing you need to do, says Larry O'Connor, the founder and CEO of Other World Computing (OWC), is move from a "platter" hard drive to a Solid State Drive (SSD). Larry's horse in this race is that his company sells SSDs, mostly for Macs. But he's a real evangelist about SSDs and computer mods in general, even if you buy them from NewEgg, Amazon or another vendor.

A big (vendor-neutral) thing Larry points out is that just because you have a Terabyte drive in your computer now doesn't mean you need a Terabyte SSD, which can easily cost $500. Rather, he says, all you need is a large enough SSD to contain your OS and software and whatever data you're working with at the moment, so you might be able to get by with a 120 GB SSD that costs well under $100. Clone your current main drive, stick in the new SSD, and if your need more storage, get another hard drive (or use your old one). Simple. Efficient. And a lot cheaper than buying a new computer, whether we're talking about home, business or even enterprise use. (Alternate video link.)

Robin:I
am Robin Miller from Slashdot. This is Larry O’Connor from
Other World Computing and we are talking about why you don’t
need to buy a new computer, something I harp on sometimes. Larry,
what can we do to make the computers we already own faster?

Larry:You’ve
already upgraded the memory which is really the easiest upgrade you
can do but also something that a very small portion of actual system
owners ever do statistically. The SSD is the next big step—replacing
a platter based drive with a solid state drive. It can make an
unbelievable difference even to a system that is as much as a decade
old.

Robin:Okay.
How much does an SSD cost?

Larry:Today,
a solid state drive starts at only fifty bucks.

Robin:Oh,
really?

Larry:Yes
siree.When you especially take a look at a system that is
six or seven years old, that is doing everything you need it to do,
there is always a point where you want something newer, and as you
get past a few years old, you may not be able to run the latest OS
and maybe the application, but you have everything you already need,
want and wish to have. I mean, there is every benefit even in a
system that is again, a decade plus old, taking out that platter
drive and dropping an SSD inside, so you kick it up, it can really be
quite impressive.

Robin:Looking
off at the side, there is this funny 08 MacBook Pro I have, now it
has got the latest operating system in it, and as I said, the video
works—we are doing it now—I have the latest video
software, so I can, well, video SSD should I, I also have a full
bunch of external hard drives. I assume that SSD would be pretty
small, wouldn’t it, at fifty bucks?

Larry:In
terms of capacity or?

Robin:Yeah.

Larry:Really,
the SSD is best served for active work, I mean things that are
actively going on. You don’t need a giant SSD beyond quite
frankly what you need for your daily processing. As long as you can
offload platter drives you are plenty fast for completed data. It is
when you are actually working on a project, when you are actually
creating new content and we are getting – the OS, I mean things
that are happening actively where drive idled is a huge bottleneck
with that SSD is just night and day.Even when you have
things that need more memory than you have, an SSD can make
everything faster just by the nature of that high speed IO.

Robin:And
then a little polish to shine it up and we are good to go? And you
just saved me a thousand dollars, thank you.

Larry:Fantastic.
Now let us say, if you are looking at something, actually even a 2006
MacBook, the very first MacBook that Apple shipped now eight years
ago, can be with an SSD can actually boot faster and feel faster for
a lot of common day applications than something that is brand new
with a hard drive today. We have long been IO bound versus truly
processor bound.There are things where a new GPU do make
a big difference. There is no argument that things have gotten faster
in other spaces. The problem when you think your computer is down, if
you have not put an SSD in there and certainly if you haven’t
upgraded the memory to the max, the best the system can support, you
have no idea of what’s sitting in front of you.If
you think you need an upgrade or need something faster and you have
not taken advantage of what’s in front of you, you can save a
whole heck of a lot and probably be happy for six months, twelve
months or even longer with a relatively low investment in that
current system.And the best part, I am sorry to be long
winded about this but

Robin:It
is okay.

Larry:It
just gets better and better to me.In addition to being
happy with what you already have, and saving all that cash upfront
versus buying something new. When it is time to buy something new,
because you just bought that time, whatever you buy is probably going
to be faster and even cheaper than what you would have bought today
new and you would be happier yet. Plus you are going to know what an
SSD does. Make sure whatever you are buying new has got that SSD
inside.

Robin:Let’s
stop talking about personal stuff; commercial, the last one I was
talking to before you is a sysadmin who runs a pretty huge data farm,
data center outside of Chicago. And I knew that the computers that
were put in that is a whole rack of Dell midline one use servers,
about 2007 originally, something like that. What is a disk I’d
be looking at?

Larry:You
know, in an enterprise space, in data farming, there are other
considerations with age, because the systems run a bigger load, there
are higher probabilities of failure, so in an enterprise space,
upgrading versus replacing, it has a whole other set of financial
ramifications. That being said, depending upon the nature of what
they are doing, a simple upgrade to the boot, I mean just the boot
time, I mean what the system operates and pages to and what it logs
to can make a night and day difference.Anytime you can remove
an IO bottleneck We see sys a lot of the stuff that
goes in today, and obviously this is not always the case, but the
majority of the work is IO the processors spend there is
always, again I don’t want to say this is absolutely 100
percent but processors spend a lot of their lives being barely
utilized compared to other bottlenecks in the system, or the IO is
such where the processors just kind of sit there, almost idle, and
there is plenty of capability in the processor and it’s
everything else has to wait.

Robin:I
suspected this. And also something else I want your opinion on—we’ve
been for a long time, Moore’s Law, every 18 months everything
got twice as faster and wonderfuller and all of that. But for the
last couple of years, now I mean I track this stuff fairly well, I
write about it, and I look at it and say, “Wow! actual net
usage, this new thingy in 2014, isn’t really going to do me any
good or any better than the 2011 one”, because the
software—what is the biggest software change, Windows 8? Oh
please, oh please, I went through Windows 8 and then I upgraded to
Windows 7 again. And I am not alone.So nothing has
changed.

Larry:I
think that has really happened is because there is so much processor
power available over the last, really the last decade, and software
has become less efficient and more bloated. And that goes right back
to, there is so much processor capability available versus the IO
capability, so now like I said you drop an SSD, since the bottleneck
has long been not so much processor based but other bottlenecks, and
we will put the GPU off to the side,and the graphic side and push
that into its own quadrant, but for most things, that’s why
again you can take a computer from seven or eight years ago, easily
drop an SSD inside because those are SADIS systems and everything is
SADIS supported, SSDs are SADIS today, they are backwards compatible,
there is no adapters, there is no real trick here, there is nothing
complicated to making one of these latest and greatest drives to drop
into those systems, that’s where you can take a system, drop in
the SSD, and you have memory limitation, and you have other
limitations, but suddenly that system is transformed.

And
to your point, really more to your point, in the Apple space, the new
Mac Pro 2013 just came out, it is a fantastic machine it is loaded
with GPU capability, but with a couple of simple upgrades, the Mac
Pro from 2009 with Nehalem processors actually can beat the base and
even may be a little bit up from base on a new Mac Pro for a fraction
of that new Mac Pro cost. And that is just a video card upgrade, and
an SSD, and of course memory equivalent to the new sys, but you put a
128 gigs into the 2009 Mac Pro, you can put a 128 gigs, actually just
as of very recently because Apple ran64 gigs.

But
we are not talking about us right now, the bottom line is you can put
the memory you need in a system from four or five years ago, no
problem. And with a simple SSD and a GPU upgrade, it actually for
PhotoShop beats the new Mac Pro with certain functions and other
functions, we are talking fractions of a second behind as opposed to
when a machine that is stocked with a hard drive and with this
original video card, a new Mac Pro today would be five, six, or seven
times faster. But it is not that the processor architecture has
suddenly evolved, like you said, Moore’s Law and just amazingly
new frontiers have been conquered here. There are other bottlenecks
to the new 2013, it has an SSD built into it, and it has the GPUs,
but they built a fantastic machine five years ago.And
with very little effort, that machine is still amazingly fantastic
today.

Robin:And
I noticed something else. For the longest time, I run Linux for
everything except video editing. And for a long time, Linux desktops
have gotten heavier and more bloated, and yet the latest ones and the
basic X desktops which I am running now—they are faster, they
are easier. You just take it and you run your latest Linux Mint,
whatever and you stick it into the computer and you say, “Oh my
goodness! It is much faster than it was with this three-year-old
one—amazing! So is there a reason other than reliability? I
mean like this keyboard it needs to be replaced, I have worn off the
letters, but other than pure physical breakdowns, and the power
supplies are getting old, that sort of thing.Why would we
buy a new computer?

Larry:The
only gating factors in terms of upgrading versus new come down to
systems where the GPU is not upgradable. I mean if there is a GPU
limitation, when you need a faster GPU that is not available as an
upgrade, or maybe its memory. There is a lot to be gained by having
more memory, but otherwise, these systems are certainly solid, and by
and large, I can speak for the Mac side, I have less experience on
the PC side, I would strongly argue that systems built, the older
systems I think of all brands I think are built better than most by
and large, there is exceptions, but there is a consistency, but I
would say that stuff has been around is number one, has proven most
failures happen sooner than later after use and by and large, these
things are built to last. They are amazingly built to last, so there
is very little reason.

Again,
if it is already working for you, unless you have an absolute
software requirement that has to have newer hardware and it just will
not run on what you’ve got, there is no reason whatsoever, in
my opinion, not to go down the upgrade space, as long as it is
possible to upgrade, very few systems limit you in that way, just
drop in a drive, add in memory, are very easy things but a huge
reward.

Robin:So
even I computed less time, I bought a computer I was desperate, it
was because my one good big desktop broke, and I had added some
videos that day, so I went up to Tiger Direct because they are local
to me in Florida. And I went up there, and I bought an HP for 400
bucks. I handed out a piece of plastic, they hand me the computer and
I was back home, and in action in 45 minutes. And then later I spent
a couple of hours cursing and pulling out the bloatware of course.
You know how that goes, you save that one you don’t buy a new
computer, but if I’d had a little more time, I could have
looked at craigslist or eBay for used stuff, couldn’t I? And
then upgraded it to need?

Larry:I
agree a 100 percent. In truth, we see more second hand owners that do
things with their systems than the initial, I mean, a lot of buyers,
they buy the system however it comes, it’s how it goes I mean,
we’ve seen Mac Pros, I mean lots of Mac Pros that come off
corporate leases, it’s like they spent all this money to get
Mac Pro and it is still a base with the base memory and the base hard
drive and the base, I mean they have this machine, they spent all
that money to get all that potential and never did anything. It is
shocking, be it a school, a business or individuals how little is
done with that, and that’s why if you look at what Apple has
done, I mean Apple recognized this, and it is an unfortunate
recognition , but they’ve started soldering things that they
used to have slots for.

Robin:So
what you are saying, is they want to make it harder for us to do
well?

Larry:It
is not even that. I am not going to – the result is an
affirmative to that, but they recognize that the vast majority of
users, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him
drink. And most people in sales anybody selling computers doesn’t
want to say about you can upgrade it to make it better; they want to
sell you a new computer.

Robin:Really?
The guys at Tiger are pretty good hobbyist guys, they say oh and this
thing has 84 slots, you can upgrade it, that’s actually how
they sell it, but those are like the commercial people and hobbyists,
the average guy who walks in that store, and I don’t know, a
Fry’s store in Northern California probably does ask of users
how many USB ports has this sucker got?

Larry:Sure.
But I mean that is still the minority. And the other side, the claim
there is, it is easy to sell a system on a feature that it is
upgradable but then you come back in and it’s like, well you
know, you are going to spend $200 to upgrade this and for $400 we can
sell you this. Again, it is to their most benefit – and a lot
ask the other thing, when it is not you that is doing the, I am not
sure, when you are talking to somebody for advice, I mean I have been
involved in upgrading systems for ever, and one of the biggest
arguments for us was why would you want to upgrade that? I mean for
not that much more you can just get a brand new and it is going to
have – right, it is always going to be all this much better.

Number
one, you do have a savings upgrading. Number two, the other big
saving is guess what, my system works just fine right now, I’ve
got the software the way I want, I can get everything working the way
I want it, whether it is driving a processor upgrade, putting in some
more memory, or putting in a solid state drive, I can transfer what I
have in the case of a drive upgrade to the new drive and it is all,
everything looks good.I buy a new system, I got to
transfer my data, and then I have to sell the used one. It sounds
great in theory, but you end up, it is not just a $200 difference to
upgrade, there are other costs involved, and some of the costs,
especially in newer systems, in fact you can’t even run some of
the software you may already have on your current hardware.

It
means you need to buy an upgrade for it, because the newest hardware
will only run the new OS and the new OS or the software you want to
run only works with the X version and later in that new OS. Now they
are reaching into your pocket for something else.

Robin:If
anybody from Apple or HP or Dell or Lenovo is watching this and
listening to us, should we be worried about assassinations?

Larry:Absolutely
positive now. At the corner of their heart, they want to see every
user happy and getting the most from their technology and what they
do in it, and by and large, not always but a lot of what they do is
really geared to how they see people using their products. So I can’t
fault any of these guys too much for some of the things that they do.

Robin:I
am going with that. Of course, watching this and listening to this,
we’ve put some thoughts into, I don’t care where they are
buying it, or they are already buying from Other Word, they buy it
from New Egg, they are buying it from monoprice, the end result is by
looking carefully and just having this thought—whether it is
commercial or personal—so people can save and will save if they
listen to what you just said, so people are going to save a lot of
money, aren’t they?

Larry:Absolutely.
To the benefit of all of these brands, they end up with greater
satisfaction because they are seeing what that system can do, now
they are happy with their brand, and honestly I think they are more
likely to feel good when it is time to buy an upgrade. When you feel
you are forced, because this thing is not fast enough, I need
something better, I am not satisfied, maybe you won’t even buy
the same brand again.

So
this is an opportunity to get more from that existing hardware, have
a better experience with it, and well move on happy, and you are
going to the bottom line is you are going to buy another
system at some point, it is certainly better that you get the most
you can and to be happy with whichever brand, product etc., because they all want that.

Well, you're wrong. 4GB is enough for almost every average user. Gamers need 8GB but no game I've ever heard of uses more than 5GB of total space while running. 16GB is basically video editing only. So no, don't max out the RAM just for the fun of it. Going from 4GB to 8GB won't do a thing for you if all you do is web browse. It would have absolutely zero impact on performance at all.